"Ideal MHD" not all it's cracked up to be?

[MGmirkin]

(Why space physics needs to go beyond the MHD box)
http://www.springerlink.com/content/p365x42162545771/

Someone's finally getting the notion that "Ideal MHD" isn't all it's cracked up to be and we need something better...

Sounds like classic Hannes Alfvén c. 1970's/1980's...

(Electric Currents in Cosmic Plasmas)
http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCL ... 341834.pdf

The good ship Astrophysics is a bit slow to turn...

Sometimes you just need a good particle-based kinetic model rather than a "bulk fluid" approximation to really get things 'correct.'

Best,
~Michael Gmirkin

[Phorce]

Interesting paper by Alfvén. I eventually worked my through it. Equations and everything . There was a lovely comet/magnetotail comparison diagram at the end which I added to my site.

Now, Magneto Hydro Dynamics. I think this is what this model is using with real time inputs ...



To my eye's it still shows electrical activity and flows. I guess someone might feed it an electrical model rather than a fluid one just to see what happens. I wonder if they might make such a thing possible (or already is?) on the iSWA. There are a lot of young, talented web designers who put that thing together by the look of it .